Forest Committee Offers New Hikes, Speakers, and Programs to Protect Our Local Forests

Angeles Chapter Forest Committee Chair

Photo courtesy Andrew M. Harvey The Forest Committee is expanding its efforts to protect backcountry areas of the Angeles National Forest such as Pleasant View Ridge, pictured above.

Our local national forests offer something for all of us - scenery, recreation, a clean water supply, land for plants and animals, and an opportunity to be outdoors with family and friends. But these forests, which contain well over half of the public open space in the Chapter's two-county area, also offer a tempting target for development, a risk that rises as a growing population presses on diminishing space.

The nearby Angeles and Cleveland National Forests - home to hundreds of Sierra Club outings each year - face threats from illegal off-road vehicles and proposals for freeways, hydroelectric dams, and massive new power and gas lines. Several key backcountry areas lack official wilderness designation to protect them from harmful development. The Angeles Chapter's Forest Committee is gearing up to provide you with interesting and enjoyable ways to help protect these majestic natural resources.

To meet the ever-increasing threats, the Forest Committee plans to broaden its efforts in conjunction with the Sierra Club's Southern California Forests Campaign. The new activities will include conservation- oriented hikes in special threatened areas, exciting and informative programs, social events, and simple actions you can take that will help in protecting our forests. Our forests need your help if they are to remain healthy and beautiful.

You can become involved in various ways. Join a hike into a 'sensitive' forest area and learn about the threats that face it, while having fun and meeting new people. On the hikes you will be given the opportunity to take an easy action to help protect the special place. Scheduled hikes include the San Gabriel River on September 30 and Pleasant View Ridge on October 11 and 21. For a list of these hikes and many more, visit www.sierraclub.org/ca/socalforests/ and click on the 'Hikes' link.

The speaker programs will begin September 27 with naturalist Richard Halsey's slide-illustrated talk on 'Secrets of the Chaparral: Wildfire and Our Local Mountains.' Halsey is a field biologist with the California Chaparral Field Institute and author of the recently published 'Fire, Chaparral and Survival in Southern California.' He is a nationally recognized expert on wildfire and chaparral. His work has highlighted the differences between the ways forest fires and chaparral fires behave, an important distinction since most of our foothill communities are near the chaparral shrublands. (See the accompanying story for more information on this outstanding speaker).

Halsey's program will be presented at 7:30 p.m. at Eaton Canyon Nature Center, 1750 N. Altadena Drive, in northeast Pasadena. Other programs are planned for January 24, March 28 and May 23 -- the fourth Wednesday of odd months, the Forest Committee's usual meeting dates. All will be at Eaton Canyon Nature Center, our new and spacious location that is close to the Angeles National Forest (From the 210 Fwy. in Pasadena, take Altadena Drive north toward the mountains about 1.5 miles, and 500 feet after crossing New York Drive, turn right into Eaton Canyon Park).

Possible future topics include little known hikes into special areas of the Angeles National Forest, San Gabriel River issues, the three greatest threats to the Angeles, faith and the environment, protecting wildlife and rare species, and the problem of illegal drugs grown or produced in the forests.

For more information, contact target=_blank> Don Bremner.